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Targets: Lower back and abs.How to: Get on all fours on the floor. Without holding your breath, draw in your stomach, keeping your spine in a neutral position. While maintaining this position, slowly lift your right arm to about ear level, extending it in front of you, and extend your left leg behind you as far as you can. Hold for five seconds. Return to starting position. Repeat exercise, with left arm and right leg. Do 40 alternating lifts.

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Side Plank

Targets: Hip, lower back and abs.How to: Lie on your right side, with your hips and knees comfortably bent. Prop yourself up with your right elbow and forearm. Slowly lift your pelvis up from the floor. Hold for 10 seconds. Relax and slowly return to starting position. Do 10 times. Reverse sides.

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Ab Stabilizer

Targets: Abdominal muscles, helping to support the lower back.How to: Lie on your back with your feet flat on floor and knees bent. Without holding your breath or pressing your back to the floor, slowly draw in your stomach. Hold for 20 seconds. Repeat 10 times.

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Back Pain? Exercise it Away

Even if you’re howling with back pain, move. “Intensive strengthening exercises for the spine are preferable to more passive therapies, like massage or ultrasound,” says Dr. Johns Childs, a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association. While the latter can ease pain, “they don’t restore normal function,” he explains. If your back hurts, try over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen or acetaminophen. And start with these three easy-to-do moves Childs gives to his patients. Do each exercise as many times as you can when you start, building up to the target goal.

Strength Training for Pain Relief

People with chronic low back pain who resistance train may be better off than aerobic exercisers who jog, walk on a treadmill or use an elliptical machine. Canadian researcher Dr. Robert Kell, assistant professor of exercise physiology at the University of Alberta, in Augustana, reports that people who strength trained three times per week for four months improved their pain and ability to function by about 60 percent. People who did aerobic exercise three times per week for 20 to 35 minutes a session had just a 12 percent benefit.“Resistance training makes the body, and back, stronger, reducing stress on them,” Kell says.For best results, do three sets of 8 to 12 repetitions of each muscle group, resting one to two minutes between sets. And always do your strength exercises in the same order, gradually upping the weight you lift. Kell recommends a 10- to 15-pound boost every two weeks or so for exercises that work more than one muscle group—like the legs and back—and a five-pound increase for single-muscle exercises like the arms. Work abdominals, too. To learn the right way to strength-train, he advises hiring a trainer.

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Back Pain? Exercise it Away

Even if you’re howling with back pain, move. “Intensive strengthening exercises for the spine are preferable to more passive therapies, like massage or ultrasound,” says Dr. Johns Childs, a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association. While the latter can ease pain, “they don’t restore normal function,” he explains. If your back hurts, try over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen or acetaminophen. And start with these three easy-to-do moves Childs gives to his patients. Do each exercise as many times as you can when you start, building up to the target goal.

iStock Photo

Back Pain? Exercise it Away

Even if you’re howling with back pain, move. “Intensive strengthening exercises for the spine are preferable to more passive therapies, like massage or ultrasound,” says Dr. Johns Childs, a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association. While the latter can ease pain, “they don’t restore normal function,” he explains. If your back hurts, try over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen or acetaminophen. And start with these three easy-to-do moves Childs gives to his patients. Do each exercise as many times as you can when you start, building up to the target goal.